Many fruits, vegetables and other agricultural produce require washing and/or treating after harvest prior to processing or packaging. Washing and treating such products presents a materials handling problem because many such products, especially agricultural products such as sweet potatoes are quite delicate and subject to bruising. The bruising and cutting of produce and agricultural products such as potatoes severely impairs and distracts from the overall quality of the harvested product. Thus, it is important in handling fruits and vegetables and other agricultural products such as sweet potatoes to handle them gently and carefully in such a manner that bruising, cutting and scraping of the products is minimized.
In the case of processing sweet potatoes, it is a known practice that after the sweet potatoes are harvested from the field they are transferred to a processing station where the sweet potatoes are first washed and/or treated, and graded. In the past, various types of washing and/or treating devices have been used to wash and treat the sweet potatoes after harvesting. In some cases, the sweet potatoes are conveyed down a grading line and prior to actual grading, the sweet potatoes are washed and/or treated by spraying nozzles that inject a cleaning and/or treating fluid downwardly onto the sweet potatoes passing thereunder on the grading conveyor system.
In addition, it has been known to dump the potatoes into a large vat containing the cleaning or treating fluid, where the potatoes are conveyed by a separate and independent conveying system through the vat by a vertically adjustable conveyor assembly that may be lowered and raised from the vat. Besides being quite expensive, this type of cleaning and treating apparatus is especially difficult to clean in that the conveyor assembly must be raised entirely from the vat before the same can be thoroughly cleaned. After this, workers usually hose down the bottom of the vat and collect the dirt, debris and other foreign material that have been separated from the sweet potatoes during the cleaning and/or treating process. Also, the separable conveyor assembly is relatively large and presents problems in raising and lowering the same with respect to the vat, besides the difficulty presented with driving the entire conveyor assembly and being able to raise and lower the conveyor assembly without disrupting or damaging the drive train connected thereto for driving the same.
Thus, it is well apparent that a need exists for a relatively simple sweet potato (or other agricultural crop product) cleaning and/or treating container structure that is relatively simple and inexpensive, but yet has the ability to receive sweet potatoes or the particular agricultural product therein and to be able to handle the same in a careful and gentle manner so as to avoid bruising, cutting, and scraping.